Warning: Today's message contains language some readers may find offensive. Proceed with caution.
Not surprisingly for a document that was completed well before the English language even existed, the Bible was not written to an English audience, neither was it written with an English audience primarily in mind.
This is very important, as it really alters how we ought to read it. Even within the English language, cultural norms seriously alter how we interpret each other. The header image highlights this perfectly. It shows a screenshot of American Christian, Frank Turek, responding to a question from an audience member. In context, he has just listed two points. That is all his hand gesture means. He is holding up two fingers to signify his second point.
However, I once got in a lot of trouble as a child for making the exact same gesture. I also said something about the number 2, I made the identical hand gesture to Turek, and before I knew it, all of my fellow students rioted and summoned a teacher. I didn't understand what I had done wrong, and so later, the exact same thing happened. I made the gesture, I got in trouble, I still didn't understand the problem. It wasn't until much later that I found out what I was doing wrong. In England, the gesture carries extra meaning. It is an offensive hand signal similar to raising the middle finger.
This is important. The identical hand gesture is perfectly innocent in one culture, but highly offensive in another. A similar example exists in geography. The so-called "f word" is considered a swear word, and yet, in Austria, there is a village called Fucking. The f word is considered so offensive in English that it is entirely possible (and to such people I apologise) that I may have offended a reader, and yet if memory serves, there was actually a vote to change the name of the village, and they voted no!
Perhaps the most interesting example is the word "piss". In modern English, this is an offensive word to describe urine that you don't want your children or your fragile grandmother to hear. But if you don't want them to hear it, you don't want to read aloud from 2 Kings 18:27, Isaiah 36:12 or the other 6 verses where the word appears as either "piss" or "pisseth", all referring to urine, in the KJV. That's right my brethren, the King James version of the Bible contains what is today considered a swear word.
The Bible works in exactly the same way. A lot of what we find strange, erroneous or even offensive in the Bible ceases to appear strange, erroneous or offensive when you read it from the perspective of its original audience. For example, many atheists like to point to Leviticus 11:19, which in the English Bible lists bats as birds. What these atheists fail to understand is that the reason the English Bible does this is because the Hebrew Bible uses a different system of classification. The word "owph" is not exactly equivalent to bird, it's just that bird is the closest available English word. Bats are not birds, but bats are owph. Similarly, penguins are birds, but they are not owph. This is because owph has more to do with the power of flight, whereas a bird is a warm-blooded, egg-laying vertebrate animal distinguished by the possession of feathers, wings, and a beak.
What about slavery? This is an issue Westerners find highly offensive. But this is because when we think of slavery, we think of the dark period of Western history when Africans were kidnapped, chained and forced to work for no wage, like animals. But is this how it was in the Bible? Not at all. The word in Hebrew is "ebed", which does not refer to kidnapped victims forced into servitude. In fact, kidnappers were given the death penalty, as were those who were found in possession of a kidnapping victim (Exodus 21:16). An Ebed of the Bible and a slave of British and American history were almost nothing alike. Once again we find the English Bible offensive because we are reading it with an English mindset.
Now, don't panic. I'm not saying that if you don't know Hebrew, you will never understand the Bible. If you have the Bible in English, you will do just fine, especially if you are connected with a Bible based congregation. However, it is important to know that historical context can alter the interpretation. Thus, we must study, and study hard. Never assume that simply reading the Bible makes you an expert.